Are you insane? We spent a trillion dollars on futile nation-building in Iraq, and you say it saved us from ourselves?
Can somebody show me that popcorn smiley trick so that I can post that when Smiley and MichaelRuss descend into conservative ideolopurity bickering in the future?
You are missing the point. The point is instead of focusing on "nation building" in Iraq, we would have been focssing "nation building" in Afghanistan, and the results in Afghanistan probably would have been even bloodier and less sucesful than Iraq (Yes that is possible). My point is that I think people who say that Afghanistan was a "failure" because we were "distracted" by Iraq, don't really have a clear definition of "failure", or what they would have considered a success in Afghanistan without the Iraq "distraction".
I have long believed that SuperDave was the worst poster on this board, but I am quickly coming to the conclusion that you deserve that title.
Yes, libs like Brummie are insane, too, but it's very disheartening when many purported conservatives can't admit that Iraq was possibly the biggest blunder in the last half-century. I'd trade that for failure in Afghanistan in a heartbeat. It costs a fraction of Iraq and it's an insignificant country. Not so long ago, in the good old days, a trillion down a rathole was an abomination to prudent people.
Awww, how well-spirited and totally within the realm of the TOS agreement! But anyhoo, how's reading Wealth of Nations going?
You keep misunderstanding what I am saying. I did not say Iraq was not a mistake. What I am saying is that Afghanistan was also a mistake, and if it would not have been for the "distraction" of the mistake that was going on in Iraq, the media would have focused more on the mistake in Afghanistan. And if their had been more media focus on Afghanistan we probably would have doubled down there in a way that would have made it an even bigger mistake. Once again what I am saying is without Iraq, we would have ended up spending more in Afghanistan, and the significance of the war there would have been magnified by all sides. And who says it was not. I am trying to address one specific issue, but you seem to be discussing another. The original issue I had was the statement that Iraq diverted us from Afghanistan and caused our problems in Afghanistan. My contention is that the problems in Afghanistan had nothing to do with Iraq, and in fact if we had focussed on Afghanistan, the problems there probably would have been magnified.
Your original post was clearly trolling, and that is why i responded with my clear cut feelings about people who troll. It seems to be what you are interested in doing even when I read your posts to other people. Your posts turn into some type of personal vendetta to "one up" the other poster to show how "smart" you are. It looks like I can expect this nonsense from you every time I post just like Dave used to do every time I posted. It get's tiresome, and it was the reason I stopped posting for a long time. Luckily Dave seems to have gotten a little bit better, but now you seem to be jumping in to take his place.
I was unaware that responding to people's posts with citations was "trolling." If you have any evidence that using facts is "trolling" and that I do it frequently, please show.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_(Internet) "a troll is someone who posts inflammatory,[2] extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking readers into an emotional response[3] or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion." What was the on topic purpose of this post? https://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/showthread.php?p=24474079#post24474079 "I don't have any idea why any of you are arguing with nicephoras...if you go back and find my argument with him over British hegemony, you'll find he self-contradicts, ignores facts like a guy with dementia, and generally does so in a manner so arrogant and pompous that he puts you on ignore? Yea, I still haven't figured out why he ignores people he so "thoroughly out-debates." But anyway, my point is that he's an idiot and don't take him any more seriously than, say, Grogtank." Is there any substance to this post or is it just a personal attack and a rehash of some other argument that in your mind you "won".
Lots of people on P&CE tell their friends to ignore certain posters and give their reasons why. Unless they're all trolls, too? Can we get back to the point?
http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/11/solar-powers-good-news Tucked into an interesting blog post chock full o' facts about the promise of solar energy I found this bit
While true, China will be getting all of the benefits of this. It's an opportunity lost, economically.
It's astonishing how clean the Obama Presidency has been. This is the big scandal story and it's not even about corruption, it's at most a tale of incompetence. I mean, when you lead with Solyndra, that means you got nothing.
What was it, that only 1 out of 39 of these companies that received loans for alternative energy purposes failed? Republicans better hope their investigations into this and the 2 Fast 2 Furious scandal come up with something more incriminating, and something they can solely blame on the Obama Administration.
Um what there have been handful of them that have failed, but this one is in the news because there IS corruption. A big time campaign contributor and friend of the Administration gets a 500 million dollar loan when the loan was deemed as a bad investment beforehand.
Shirley you can't be serious... Do a little homework son. Solyndra, EnerDel, Evergreen Solar, Beacon Power... the list grows daily. And who can forget that wonderful taxpayer investment in Fisker motors.
Person A: Makes a false statement about the success rate in Green Energy. Person B: Corrects that false statement, but misses an "a" while doing so. AmericanBrummie- calls out person B. Ohhhh BigSoccer
http://dailycaller.com/2011/09/13/obamas-solyndra-case-follows-blagos-pattern/ Its probably not on wiki because there is no smoking gun- no proven link that the campaign contributions were the reason the near-zero-interest-500-million-dollar-loan-to-a-firm-that-they-knew-was-going-to-go-bankrupt was given. But, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck (Or rather, if it borrows like a green energy firm and wastes money like a green energy firm), then....